[HuffingtonPost] Eva Blum-Dumontet: 29c3: Hacking Politics

Every year at the end of December, computer hackers from all over the world gather in Germany - this time in Hamburg - for the Chaos Communication Congress, four days of talks, meetings and workshops. [...]

Surveillance, protection of whistle-blowers, web neutrality, anonymity online, data retention, copyrights... Hackers are fighting more than one battle. Yet, according to Jérémie Zimmerman, co-founder of La Quadrature du Net, an advocacy group defending the rights and freedoms of citizens on the Internet, there is a common parameter to those causes: the appreciation of technology. [...]

Cryptography, open source software and web neutrality are talked about in every corner. For Jérémie Zimmerman, the last two are not something our society can do without. "The combination of a free and open Internet and open source software are the two essential prerequisites for a free society in a democratic and connected environment." And indeed many organisations emerged from this hacker ethics asserting the Internet as a tool toward building a better functioning democracy. [...]